Starting Over
by demented-dementor
Summary: Simon decides to leave Serenity, time-travels back to earth-that-was, and gets a job at County General.


A/N: I wrote this first chapter out of boredom while I was stuck on a very delayed train. I haven't written a lot of fanfic, and this is the first one I've actually gotten around to publishing, so I hope you enjoy it. Oh, and just to clear things up, I don't actually own Firefly _or_ ER.

This is set after the end of the 1st (only) season of Firefly, before (or ignoring) the movie, and in the middle of season 6 of ER, at least to start.

Prologue:

"Simon, please reconsider this. You are as welcome on this boat now as you have ever been." Captain Mal Reynolds sat at the table in Serenity's galley, looking none too happily at his ship's doctor.

Dr. Simon Tam, sitting across from Mal, glared back. "I know I'm welcome here, captain, but I'm just not sure that this life is what River needs right now. For that matter, I'm not sure it's what I need. And the alliance is getting closer and closer to catching us. It's only a matter of time before they do, and if we're still here..."

"The alliance is not going to catch you." Mal cut him off. "And you know that we're all willing to take the risk for you two."

"I've already made up my mind. We're leaving Serenity, at least for a while."

"Where are you going to go? I thought we established that you were the safest on the move."

"It's not just where, it's when. I still have some contacts from before I was a fugitive, and I think I can arrange time travel for the two of us. We're going to go live on Earth-that-was for a while. I'll get a job at a hospital, get River into a school, and hopefully be safe from the alliance."

"Well," Mal frowned, trying to figure out how to convince Simon. "Who's going to stitch us all up when we get shot?"

"Without me with you, you can go to an actual hospital. And anyways, you probably wouldn't have as many wounded crew members if we weren't here."

* * *

CHAPTER ONE: The First Day

"Hey, Dr. Carter, have you met the new surgical attending? He seems so young." Fourth-year medical student Lucy Knight asked her supervisor one morning while they were both taking a break in the lounge.

"I haven't yet. His name is Dr. Tam, right? What's he like?"

"Well, I was sure he was an Intern, if not a med student, the first time I saw him." Dr. Dave, who was digging through the fridge, pitched in.

"He's absolutely gorgeous too," Lucy added.

Dr. Greene had just walked in to the lounge, being at the end of his shift. "Are you talking about the new surgical attending?" He asked, stopping at the desk. Lucy nodded. "He seems like a nice enough guy and an excellent surgeon. Elizabeth said he came with the highest qualifications, too."

"A good surgeon who's also a good guy? This place could certainly use more of those." Carter smirked.

Carol Hathaway, the nurse manager, stuck her head into the lounge. "We've got a multi-victim MVA coming in. Two majors and one minor, ETA 5 minutes."

A few minutes later, Dr. Greene had left for the night, Carter, Dave, Lucy, Kovac, Weaver, and a handful of nurses were outside in the ambulance bay waiting, and surgery had been paged. The first ambulance drove up, and a paramedic opened the doors. Kovac walked up to the back of the ambulance."

"What have we got?"

"Two-car moderate velocity collision with passenger space intrusion, looks like the other driver was intoxicated. This is Jeff Clinton, 37, driver of vehicle number one. Head injury with positive LOC, but GCS is 15 now, complains of chest pain, probable fracture to the left lower extremity, tachy at 120, resps 20 b.p. 110/80."

"How are you doing, Mr. Clinton?" Kovac asked him.

"Not to great."

"Okay, I'll take this one, trauma two. C-spine, chest, and left tib/fib x-rays, abdominal ultrasound, full trauma panel, CBC and cross and hold." He went into the ER with the gurney just as the second ambulance pulled in. Weaver went to meet it.

"Amy Clinton, 9, backseat passenger of vehicle number one. Small head lac, with no LOC, complains of right wrist pain, vitals normal."

"Hey Amy, where does it hurt?" Weaver asked the little girl.

"Mostly my wrist. Where's my dad?" She asked, obviously scared.

"Another doctor's taking care of him right now." She turned to Carter, "Why don't you and Lucy take her, in the suture room." Carter nodded and went forward to take the gurney.

"I'm Dr. Carter and this is Lucy. We're going to take good care of you, ok?"

"Okay," she said, close to tears.

Weaver claimed the third patient, the driver of the other car, who was obviously drunk and who hadn't been wearing a seatbelt. He had multiple cuts on his face from hitting the windshield, and had a compound fracture of his collarbone, but didn't seem to be very badly injured otherwise. "Lucky bastard." Dave said under his breath. Not wanting to deal with the obnoxious resident, Weaver told him to go see if Kovac needed help.

*****************

Simon Tam was half way his first shift at Chicago County General. It wasn't exactly easy fitting in, considering that he was from 500 years in the future, but Simon had minored in the history of medicine as an undergraduate and had studied current procedures, equipment, and medications for hours a day for the last few months while he was in the process of getting a job and settling River into her new life. It also didn't hurt that Simon was a genius. He felt like he was adequately up to speed on the medicine, and not doing too shabby at fitting in at his new job.

Simon's pager went off. Now that was something he wasn't used to. During his time on Serenity, when Simon was needed, either someone ran and got him, or he was called over the intercom. It'd been a while since he'd worked in a real hospital, acted like a real doctor.

Simon looked at the number on the pager. He'd memorized most of the list of extensions and knew he was being paged to the ER. He took the stairs and got down to the Emergency Room just as the first of the three car accident victims was being wheeled in. Simon followed them into trauma 2.

"Surgery's here." He announced.

"Hey, you're the new surgeon, right? Dr. Tam is it?" asked a tall, dark haired doctor who had an accent that Simon couldn't quite place.

"Yeah. Simon." Simon nodded.

"I'm Luka Kovac. Welcome to County General."

"Thanks. So what have we got?"

"Medium velocity MVA. We've already cleared the neck, and are waiting to get a head CT. He has absent breath sounds on the right, chest film shows at least four broken ribs."

"I'll put in the chest tube."

Simon explained the procedure to the patient, and put in the chest tube easily. He had, after all, done one the first week of his third year in medical school. As he was finishing, another doctor, who he had seen once or twice before, walked into the room.

"You need any help, Dr. Kovac?" He asked.

Kovac looked at the thoraseal that Simon had hooked up to the chest tube. It only had about 100 cc's of blood in it.

"I think Dr. Tam and I have it covered. You could call Ortho for me, he probably has a broken leg."

"Got it." Dave went over to the phone and started to dial the number. He stopped half way through. "I don't think we've been introduced. I'm Dave Malucci, but most people call me Dr. Dave."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Simon Tam."

Dave went back to calling Ortho, while Simon turned back to Jeff, the patient.

"Any abdominal pain or tenderness when I push down on it?" Jeff shook his head. "Is my daughter ok?"

Kovac answered him, "I don't know anything about your daughter, but we can find out for you."

"I'll go see." Dave said, having just hung up the phone. "Ortho should be down within the next half hour." He went through the doors into the suture room.

"Well, the good news is that the injury to your chest probably won't need surgery, though we'll have to wait on an orthopedics consult for your leg." Simon turned to Kovac. "I'd like to get an ultrasound of his abdomen just to be safe."

"I can do that, we're just waiting on CT for his head at this point. Why don't you go check out the patient in Trauma 1?"

Simon nodded and walked through the doors into the other trauma room.

***********

By the time Dave came into the suture room, Lucy was talking quietly with Amy as she stitched up the laceration on the girl's forehead, while Carter supervised and wrote something on Amy's chart.

"Hey, Amy, your dad's asking about you."

"Is he okay? I want to see him!" Amy said.

"It looks like he's going to be fine, but he's hurt pretty badly, Amy, so you can't see him quite yet." Dave turned to Carter. "How's she doing?"

"We're waiting to get a wrist film, but it looks like other than that, Amy here is okay. You can tell her dad she's being really brave." He winked at Amy, who smiled back.


End file.
